


take out

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 23:52:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14779640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: By the time she became a high school student, Noriko had become accustomed to eating lunch alone in class.





	take out

**Author's Note:**

> i try not to involve 2 much of my personal feelings while writing but "the subtle feeling of alienation of being a gay girl expected by default to partake in extremely straight conversation about boys" is such effortless padding material argh sorry

By the time she became a high school student, Noriko had become accustomed to eating lunch alone in class. Her mother wasn’t really the cooking type, and neither was she, truthfully, and so she had made it a habit to buy bread and a drink from the school cafeteria and eat at her table, spending the remaining minutes of lunch break slouched over the wooden desk as she lazily watched a group of girls huddle together with their own food, laughing between bites of home-packed rice about whatever hideous gossip of the day they were latching to like ants to honey.

 _I can’t believe it,_ they would whisper amongst themselves. _How awful_. _I didn’t know Senpai was that kind of guy._ Boys were barred from eavesdropping, but they hovered constantly in their conversations all the same, a subject either to be exalted or despised, sometimes in the same breath. _I’m in love with him. Do you think he’ll notice me if I—?_ It was always a boy. Noriko wondered how long she would have to listen to them talk before she understood.

Noriko knew, intrinsically, that the girls in her class weren’t bad people, and that they would gladly let her into their little group if she only cared enough to walk up to them and ask. _Can I sit with you,_ she only had to say, smiling placidly as she held her pathetic plastic-wrapped jam bun as though it were some kind of peace offering, and surely it would be terribly impolite on their part to decline. They were only two weeks into the term; she knew if she didn’t make an effort to cozy up to them now, it would only become harder for her to befriend them later. That was how it worked, or so she had heard.  

But it wasn’t as if she was ever good at that. She wondered if making nice with them would mean having to pay attention to what people said of one another behind their backs, and form her own opinions accordingly. The kind, adoring things, and the mean things too. Teenage girls could be vicious when they wanted to be, she knew, even the kind with soft eyes and radiant smiles and lovely dimpled cheeks that colored in the most precious way when they spoke in hushed voices about an older boy they had fallen head over heels for.

But Noriko didn’t care much for gossip, and she didn’t care much of what people thought, and she didn’t care at all about boys. And ultimately, she didn’t think any of it was worth it. So she ate lunch alone. What was wrong with that?

The bread tasted sweet, but it was an artificial kind of sugary, the kind that stuck and cloyed in her mouth even after she threw the plastic wrapper in the trash and drank plain milk to wash the flavor away.

Later that day, as she excused herself to the bathroom and bent over the sink to wash her hands, Noriko remembered that yesterday an upperclassman had handed her a registration form for extracurricular clubs, and that it was due tomorrow. The girl was pretty, with strikingly cold eyes that looked past her as she showed Noriko around the track field and explained something about practice schedules and routines. By the time she gave her the slip of paper she would have to fill in to sign up, Noriko had already made her decision.

She had done track and field in middle school, but she had a feeling Seven Sisters took the sport a bit more seriously than her previous school did. It would mean waking up even earlier, staying back until late afternoon… it would mean adapting a better diet to make up for the extra effort, she realized.

But, she didn’t care. She was already imagining rising at the crack of dawn to prepare not one but _two_ boxes of lunch – it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would service, and wasn’t effort what _truly_ mattered? – imagining brushing past the myriad of upperclassman to call out to Yoshizaka, saying _it’s me, Noriko, from the club; I know you must be busy and we don’t know each other very well, but is it alright if I eat lunch with you—it’s a bit embarrassing, but I happened to make too much food this morning, see…_

Noriko smiled. She would gladly give up her languid days of buying cheap bread for lunch if it meant she would be able to make that thought a reality. As she returned to class, smiling to herself, she resolved that if she wanted to go the route of impressing her senior through food, she might as well start by making a boxed lunch for herself tomorrow. Practice made perfect, after all, or so they said. And if the conversations she overheard were any indication, no one in the world could possibly have more determination to succeed than a girl with a crush.


End file.
